Product Owner Manager

HP · Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Description -

Job Summary

The Product Owner Manager will lead the transformation of the existing Product Owner organization into a high-performing, product-centric capability. This leader will establish clear role expectations, operating practices, competency standards, career and development pathways, and measurable performance mechanisms for Product Owners.

The role will elevate the Product Owner discipline using SAFe principles and modern product-management practices while identifying responsible, practical ways to use AI to improve product discovery, backlog quality, prioritization, decision support, stakeholder communication, and team productivity.

This is both a people leadership and organizational transformation role. The successful candidate will be accountable for the collective effectiveness of the Product Owner team, the maturity of the Product Owner capability, and the sustained adoption of the new operating model.

Responsibilities

Lead the Product Owner organization

· Provide direct leadership, direction, coaching, and development for the Product Owner team.

· Establish clear outcomes, expectations, accountabilities, and performance measures for Product Owners.

· Build an inclusive, accountable, and continuously improving team culture.

· Conduct regular performance, development, talent, and succession discussions.

· Identify capability gaps and create individual and team development plans.

· Ensure Product Owners have the skills, context, authority, and support required to make effective product decisions.

· Address role ambiguity, inconsistent practices, and barriers that prevent Product Owners from operating effectively.

Define and elevate the Product Owner discipline

· Define the Product Owner mandate, role expectations, decision rights, interfaces, and accountability model.

· Create and maintain a Product Owner capability and competency framework.

· Establish consistent Product Owner practices while preserving appropriate flexibility across products.

· Develop role-based learning, coaching, onboarding, and accreditation pathways.

· Establish a Product Owner community of practice and mechanisms for sharing learning, patterns, and reusable assets.

· Build scalable playbooks, tools, templates, and guidance for effective product ownership.

· Partner with Product Management and Engineering leaders to clarify the relationship between Product Managers, Product Owners, Engineering Managers, architects, delivery roles, and other stakeholders.

Advance SAFe and product-centric ways of working

· Adapt and embed relevant SAFe principles and practices across the Product Owner organization.

· Strengthen the connection from product strategy and roadmaps through prioritization, planning, backlogs, execution, delivery, and outcome measurement.

· Improve Product Owner effectiveness in PI Planning, backlog management, iteration planning, stakeholder engagement, dependency management, and review of delivered outcomes.

· Partner with Product, Engineering, Portfolio, and Product Operations leaders to establish effective planning and operating cadences.

· Assess current maturity and create a pragmatic roadmap for capability improvement.

· Balance framework consistency with the needs and maturity of individual products and teams.

Enable responsible use of AI

· Define priority use cases for AI within Product Owner workflows.

· Help Product Owners use AI to improve research synthesis, backlog preparation, requirements quality, prioritization analysis, meeting preparation, stakeholder communications, and knowledge discovery.

· Establish practical guidance, reusable workflows, and enablement for secure and responsible AI use.

· Partner with relevant security, privacy, legal, technology, and governance stakeholders when introducing AI-enabled practices.

· Track whether AI adoption results in meaningful improvements to quality, cycle time, decision-making, or team capacity.

· Maintain human accountability for product decisions and customer outcomes.

Drive organizational change and adoption

· Develop and execute the change strategy for the Product Owner capability transformation.

· Build awareness of why the Product Owner role is changing and what the change means for Product Owners, Product Managers, Engineering teams, and leaders.

· Engage Product Owners in shaping the future model and identifying barriers to adoption.

· Equip leaders and people managers to reinforce the new expectations consistently.

· Sequence communications, learning, coaching, and implementation according to organizational readiness.

· Use feedback, maturity assessments, retrospectives, and adoption measures to refine the approach.

· Establish reinforcement mechanisms that make the new practices part of day-to-day work rather than a one-time transformation effort.

Measure capability health and business impact

· Define a balanced measurement framework covering capability maturity, adoption, product flow, predictability, quality, engagement, stakeholder confidence, and business or customer outcomes.

· Establish transparent mechanisms for reviewing Product Owner team effectiveness.

· Use qualitative and quantitative evidence to identify systemic issues and recommend improvements.

· Ensure measures encourage the right behaviors and are not limited to activity or output metrics.

· Report progress, constraints, decisions, and outcomes to the appropriate leadership forums.

Leadership accountabilities

· The role will be accountable for:

· Performance and development of the Product Owner team.

· Clarity and consistent application of the Product Owner role.

· Maturity and sustainability of the Product Owner capability.

· Adoption of fit-for-purpose SAFe and product-centric practices.

· Effectiveness of Product Owner interfaces with Product Management, Engineering, and Product Operations.

· Responsible adoption of AI-enabled Product Owner workflows.

· Evidence that the capability is improving product decisions and customer or business outcomes.

Qualifications Required

· Significant experience leading Product Owners, Product Managers, business analysts, agile practitioners, or comparable product-delivery roles.

· Demonstrated experience defining or transforming Product Owner roles, practices, or capability models.

· Experience leading people, including setting expectations, coaching, developing talent, and managing performance.

· Strong understanding of product-centric operating models and the relationship between strategy, discovery, prioritization, delivery, and outcomes.

· Applied experience with agile product delivery and scaled planning environments.

· Experience leading organizational change across multiple teams and stakeholder groups.

· Ability to partner effectively with senior leaders across Product, Engineering, Operations, and other functions.

· Experience creating competency frameworks, assessments, learning pathways, coaching programs, or communities of practice.

· Strong facilitation, communication, stakeholder management, and conflict-resolution skills.

· Ability to use evidence and metrics to assess capability maturity and guide improvement.

· Demonstrated ability to lead through ambiguity and translate strategy into practical operating mechanisms.

Preferred

· SAFe certification or substantial applied experience in a SAFe environment.

· Product Owner/Product Manager, product management, agile coaching, or S

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